


Permanent Marking

by astraplain



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, Not Klaine Friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 00:41:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7131086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astraplain/pseuds/astraplain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By tradition, infants are tattooed with the name of their soulmate as foretold by an Oracle</p>
            </blockquote>





	Permanent Marking

“He’s finally sleeping.” Elizabeth slumped into a kitchen chair and rested her head on the table. It was after midnight and Kurt had been crying steadily since they left the tattoo parlor.

Wordlessly Burt slid a steaming mug of chamomile tea closer and waited for her to look up. He’d made his opinion of the whole soulmate nonsense clear from the beginning; there was no point in bringing it up again now that he’d been outvoted. Lizzie and her parents were determined to follow that outdated tradition and no one in Burt’s family cared enough to protest.

“The Andersons are a good family,” Lizzie said as she sat up and reached for the tea. She needed to be up in less than six hours but didn’t expect the tea to do much to settle her nerves. Her mother and father had insisted on accompanying them when Kurt was presented to the Oracle and the entire day had turned into a fiasco.

“Poor Kurt,” she curled her hands around the mug, taking comfort in the warmth as she finally met Burt’s eyes. “He was very brave.”

“He was,” Burt agreed, but without his usual softness. He was rarely harsh to her but insisting on having the Oracle foretell Kurt’s soulmate had put a barrier between then that Lizzie was afraid would never be fully removed. Especially when the Oracle’s prediction was tattooed on Kurt’s left hand.

Burt had done what he could to convince them to place the tattoo somewhere that it could be easily concealed, but Lizzie’s parents and the Oracle had overruled even that. And Lizzie… she’d never heard Kurt cry like that. He was a sweet-tempered child, even when he was teething or ill. Listening to him cry for hours had worn away all of her confidence in the whole soulmate ritual.

But it was too late. The Oracle had made her prediction, and Kurt would carry the name ‘Blaine Anderson’ on his left hand for the rest of his life.

“The Andersons are good family,” Lizzie repeated, and Burt nodded once, stiffly and looked away. They’d pledged Kurt’s future to a family they knew only by reputation. They could only hope that the Oracle was right.

++++++

“Blaine Anderson?” Burt asked, his voice sharp. He turned to get a better look at the boy who was destined to be Kurt’s soulmate and felt his heart speed up in his chest. This hungover punk in his son’s bed? This was Kurt’s soulmate?

Pushing aside his sense of dread, Burt pulled Kurt out of the room and steeled himself for ‘the talk’.

Burt would become very familiar with that unsettled feeling over the next few years. Time and again he pushed his own doubts aside for the sake of a name tattooed on Kurt’s hand.

Eventually, for the sake of Lizzie’s memory, Burt pushed those doubts aside entirely.

++++++

“What have you done?” Burt gripped Kurt’s bare hand so hard he could feel the bones underneath the pale skin.

“What I should have done a year ago,” Kurt replied, ice and steel in his voice. He’d expected a fight over this and he’d come prepared.

“My friends. The ones I met in New York? They thought the soulmate thing was ‘cute’. Like it was some kind of outdated novelty from the provinces. People find their matches all the time. Sometimes they find more than one, like you did Dad.” Kurt reached over and touched Burt’s hand, tracing the faded script of his mother’s name.

“I looked it up. Seventy-eight percent accuracy is good for an Oracle. The one who gave me Blaine’s name had a much lower success rate.”

“Kurt, I…” Burt took off his cap and rubbed his head, trying desperately to gather his thoughts. All those years of doubts returned full-force and he had to sit down quickly before his legs gave out.

“I’m not blaming anyone,” Kurt softened his tone but didn’t reach out to touch Burt again. “All I ask is that you let me, not some Oracle decide who I spend my life with. Blaine’s not my soulmate. He never was.”

“I’ll try,” Burt said, because half a lifetime of habit wouldn’t be easy to change, no matter how he might want it to be.

+++++

“Nice to meet you, Adam.” Burt extended his hand in greeting and was shocked to see what appeared to be Kurt’s name written on Adam’s hand.

“It’s not a tattoo,” Adam assured him, lifting his hand so Burt could examine the slightly uneven scrawl of letters.

“Permanent marker,” Kurt said as he joined them. He let Burt examine his hand and the name written on it. “It looked strange without the writing so I asked Adam to give me his autograph.”

“I insisted on having his in return,” Adam slipped his arm around Kurt and pulled him close. “My bright star.”

As they leaned into a kiss, Burt felt his doubt and anxiety fade. They might not be predestined to be soulmates, but he had a feeling Adam would be around for a while.

Before he left New York that week Burt made a few phone calls. Just as his plane touched down in Ohio, Kurt received a delivery - a rainbow bouquet of permanent markers.

::end::


End file.
